Tuesday, August 5, 2014

MWWhat inspired you to start taking photographs, and what have been some of the most important milestones in your career up until now?

NH
I began taking photographs in my third year of university. I was in the fine arts program with my focus in printmaking but since I used a lot of photo imagery in my prints I decided I should take a photography class in case I couldn't find existing imagery out there. Remember, this is before the days of the internet so when you wanted to find pictures you had to look through magazines and books like the encyclopedia. I went to Europe that summer for a holiday taking pictures while over there and when I came home and developed my film I decided to switch my focus to photography.

Milestones, that's tough. There are the obvious ones like having my first book "America Swings" published by TASCHEN, being selected by World Press Photo to attend their Joop Swart Master Class and receiving the Canada Council for the Arts grants but I guess every day I still do this and haven't quit photography yet is a milestone!

MWHow do you approach editing your work, and what advice would you give to others about evaluating their photographs?

NH
Editing is very intuitive for me. I look over a contact sheet and the best images stand out immediately so I circle them. This is something I miss when I shoot digitally, to be able to look at the contact sheet with my markings and notes all over it.

When working on a project I think it's important to make a very wide edit and scan these images to look further at as a group. Then you whittle your way down from there. Of course there are those photos that you know instantly you want to include but then sometimes you need to take stock as to what you already have, what is too similar to one another, what sorts of images are you lacking etc. Sometimes a picture might end up in your final edit and not because it's one of your favourites but because it's the only one of it's kind and you need it to complete the story and to make it more well rounded.

I think another important key to editing is to forget about the experiences that you had while taking the photograph. It's easy to get caught up in the backstory of how much fun you had or how hard it was to obtain that photo but that's your own personal experience, your viewer didn't share in that experience and only judge a photo based on it's contents not the hows and whys.

MWHow do you decide on new projects to work on? Do you always shoot with a concept in mind or do you wait to be inspired as you go?

NH
Each project I shoot is unique but all share this in common: will I get bored shooting this? Like the most recent project I'm working on EUSA I discovered while in Georgia shooting the last swinger party for America Swings. I stumbled upon this Bavarian town in the middle of America's deep south and after doing some research for other similar locations a project was born! I've been traveling around the US and Europe shooting this off and on since 2008 and hope to be done and a book released fall of 2015.

So far I shoot mainly reportage style waiting to see what will be there when I arrive. This is true of my portraits as well. But I'm interested in trying to shoot a little more conceptually though for future projects. For one thing I seem to always pick subjects that require a ton of travel and that ends up taking a toll both financially and physically. I find it harder and harder to find things that other photographers haven't gotten to first so maybe by coming up with something weird and wacky in my mind and executing it in a studio I can create something new and unique and not have to get dressed in the morning either!

MWWhat ways have you found successful for promoting your work and finding a receptive audience for it?

NH
Hmmm, I'm still trying to figure that one out myself. Like when the swingers book came out it was before Twitter and I wasn't doing Facebook yet so I relied solely on the publisher to promote it. Today there are so many social media outlets as well as a ton of blogs which I also question a little. Like when I first started in this business there were a few photo magazines that published monthly or bimonthly and to be featured in there was a super big deal and each magazine wanted to be the first to discover a project and people really took stock in what was being featured. Today there are so many photo blogs and they need new content on a daily basis so I find the quality of work being showcased has gotten really pitiful. I think a lot of mediocre work ends up being elevated to some other level because of people sharing links on Facebook and Twitter and a buzz is created around it. As well as I find a lot of these media outlets to be lazy, like if your story was written up somewhere another blog will jump on board often not even interviewing you but just paraphrasing the original article and using those same photos, pretty much recycling it.

Last summer I drove around the US with my dog living out of my car and while I did use Instagram a little (to show Maggie on our travels) I didn't do a blog or too much around shooting. I think sometimes the focus is put on the promotion of a project and the social media angle and the experience of being present and taking good pictures is lost.

From How Campus Got Kinky, shot for Marie Claire UK, October 2013, from the series Portraits

Chewbacca On Set of "Star Wars XXX" Los Angeles, CA, shot for Bizarre Magazine, from the
series Portraits

Monday, June 23, 2014

MWWhat inspired you to start taking photographs, and what have been some of the most important milestones in your career up until now?

SAM
I grew up an only child. Well no, not exactly. I have two older brothers but they are much older than me, so it was as if I was an only child. I have vivid memories of hours spent going over family albums in solitude– making up stories about the pictures and pretending I was there even though most were taken before I was alive. This passion for storytelling stayed with me all through my childhood. I was the one in my family who always had the camera or camcorder in hand- documenting our family histories. And so it was natural for me to be a photographer- I was struck by the power of the image from a very early age.

Thinking back I’d have to say that the first milestone in my career was when I discovered the International Center for Photography (ICP) on 94th Street in NYC. It was like finding a secret magic hideaway in the big city. It was there where I fell in love with the darkroom. I went on to study at ICP (albeit in the midtown location) and from there I was introduced to a few key people working in the industry. It is because of the support from my teachers that I got my first big break – shooting a cover story for the New York Times Magazine. The most significant recent milestone would be producing my first monograph Tall Poppy Syndrome, published by Decode Books. It’s a huge honor to have your work made into a book and I feel privileged to have been able to do that.

MWHow do you approach editing your work, and what advice would you give to others about evaluating their photographs?

SAM
I aim to have an impartial, and rather cutthroat, approach to editing my images. It is crucial that I remove myself from the initial emotional/gut reaction/love affair. I often have to remind myself that no one else will know or care about the details that occurred behind the scenes and that what counts is only that which is explicitly within the image. Following that, a photograph only remains and becomes part of a series if it progresses the body of work as a whole.

I try to keep in mind the old adage that less is more.

MWHow do you decide on new projects to work on? Do you always shoot with a concept in mind or do you wait to be inspired as you go?

SAM
At the moment I’m doing a little of both. I am not someone who carries a camera with me everywhere. But I do always have a pen and paper (or the notepad and camera on my iPhone) working through ideas. If I see an “image” I write it down, take photos on my phone, and then shoot it again later in a more controlled manner. So I guess I run with daily inspiration and then once I have a more concrete concept in mind I shoot until the concept is realized.

MWWhat ways have you found successful for promoting your work and finding a receptive audience for it?

SAM
I believe the same is true in the art world as is with any practice or profession - you need to have confidence in your work. And with that confidence comes pride and excitement. If you’re not excited then why should anyone else be? I aim to only put my work out for public viewing when I feel it is complete and ready to have a life of its own.

Another aspect (and this is also true in any profession) is that personal connections are really important. Building relationships with fellow artists is priceless. I feed off camaraderie with peers. And beyond that, I make time to go to openings, events, talks, fairs, etc. because I never know who I will meet.
For me opportunities tend to arise through building personal relationships.

Lago Vista, Texas, from the series American Palimpsests

Covered Bridge. Austin, Texas, from the series American Palimpsests

Las Vegas, Nevada, from the series American Palimpsests

Magnolia, Texas #1, from the series American Palimpsests

Pasture. Plainfield, Illinois, from the series This Was What There Was

Sinclair Oil. Gateway, Colorado, from the series This Was What There Was

Mr. Dee’s Fish. Fredericksburg, Virginia, from the series This Was What There Was

Kudzu. Mobile, Alabama, from the series This Was What There Was

Distinguish Yourself From the Crowd, Broken Hill, from the series Tall Poppy Syndrome

Schoolchildren, Weethalle, from the series Tall Poppy Syndrome

Lillian, Broken Hill, from the series Tall Poppy Syndrome

Stands Out Like Dog’s Balls, Milton, from the series Tall Poppy Syndrome

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

MWWhat inspired you to start taking photographs, and what have been some of the most important milestones in your career up until now?

MV
I've been taking photographs since I was 12 which for the time was quite unusual, but really my current project only started in 1994. It was then when I decided that I really wanted to photograph what I wanted and not what others wanted me to do.

MWHow do you approach editing your work, and what advice would you give to others about evaluating their photographs?

MV
The main approach to editing is to shoot very little. Just to give you an idea, in the past 20 years I have shot less than 5000 negatives. Even now with digital I only shoot the bare minimum number of shots and I immediately skip bracketing,HDR alternative versions. I know exactly what I want before so I can more or less shoot just one or two more shots for safety. Obviously when I started, I was using large format cameras and it would have been impossible to use a different shooting agenda. Therefor for me editing has never been a problem because I have a very clear idea beforehand of what picture I am going to take. That way I keep my hard disk unclogged!

MWHow do you decide on new projects to work on? Do you always shoot with a concept in mind or do you wait to be inspired as you go?

MV
Of course I shoot with a concept in mind and I must say it's always very tight and thoroughly researched. Digital or non-digital, I always use an 18 foot scaffolding structure from which to take my pictures and it's not so easy to move it around a lot.

MWWhat ways have you found successful for promoting your work and finding a receptive audience for it?

MV
Being recognizable, in the sense that people in a fair might not know your pictures or your name, but have to recognize your style.

About this Blog

Two Way Lens is a project designed to inform and inspire emerging photographers wanting to focus their creative output in a way that enhances their chances of finding an audience, being included in exhibitions and ultimately achieving gallery representation. The journey from inspired artist to successful artist is one that is often difficult to negotiate and hard to control. On these pages, I will feature the experiences and opinions of other photographers who I have found inspiring, and hopefully the knowledge they have built in their own experiences will be valuable to all of us finding our own way to sharing our creativity with the wider world.

About Two Way Lens

Two Way Lens is a project designed to inform and inspire emerging photographers wanting to focus their creative output in a way that enhances their chances of finding an audience, being included in exhibitions and ultimately achieving gallery representation. The journey from inspired artist to successful artist is one that is often difficult to negotiate and hard to control. On these pages, I will feature the experiences and opinions of other photographers who I have found inspiring, and hopefully the knowledge they have built in their own experiences will be valuable to all of us finding our own way to sharing our creativity with the wider world.